THE "EYES" HAVE IT

Visual components of culinary art

    On this blog, I’m writing about mostly food but not just about cooking. Aside from food information, and gardening, herbs and more there is the presentation of the final work all these other things lend to. When entertaining, or when preparing and serving a meal, there are other aspects that I feel are important to the whole of what I want to give. Cooking delectable food is part of it, as is making the dining experience reflect the effort that goes into making a grand meal. The more one considers these other areas, I feel, the better they get at the true art of cookery.

v Cooking would be assembling and applying heat to food.

v Good cooking would be applying heat to food, with skill and success to bring about delicious meals.

v Being a good cook would be cooking with skill, success, deliciousness, and care and purpose to please others.

v Being a chef is being a master at the skills required in cooking well with creativity.

v And I don’t have a final category name so I will use the word Culinarian.  A culinary master is all the above combined, especially the last two in this little outlined list, namely a good cook, and a chef, with one more aspect thrown in and that is Hospitality.

     So being 1. a good cook and 2. a chef and 3. a gracious host, is always my goal. My purposes in my writing are those which reflect my feelings indeed my philosophies about something beyond being just the preparer of even the very finest foods. Did you now that offering hospitality was considered one of the highest values to the Hebrews in the Bible, as well as later in the cultures when Jesus was alive.

     The act of creating good food / meals for others should, in my opinion, combine many aspects. It has as much to do with serving as with preparing the food. When cooking becomes an art, and act of love, and skills learned,  are done so as to maximize that offering to be the best you can possibly give, then you really are a Culinarian.

     

     And as I have said before and will say a hundred times at least before I die, “A great meal has three things going for it. Smell, sight, and taste.” Most all the senses and the even maybe the sixth are a little involved, but the main three are in order again… Smell Sight and Taste.

     SMELL is the first part of your offering as it hits people first. It is not a skill you are learning but a by-product of having learned your skill well. If when my children, or friends, or guests arrive for a dinner, they walk in and say “Gosh it smells good in here.” I know I am doing my job right. This is the olfactory sense of aromas that make taste into flavor. Have some hors d’oeuvres at hand to quell the appetite the smell will immediately give your guests, preferably some munchies along the same lines and theme as the food you are cooking and they are smelling.

   The third aspect will come if you have done your job well, when they sit down and TASTE your meal and they are delighted with their gustatory sensations. You made their taste buds and them happy.

   It’s the middle thing I mentioned that this article is about. What do your loved ones or guests SEE when they arrive and when they sit down at the table. This is the ophthalmic sense. This aspect should always be considered as an important part of how to experience the offering or serving of a fine meal. Anyone can place crackers cheese and meats on a platter, but for a special occasion add a swan made from cutting an apple, surrounded with little olive rose buds in the middle, and some parsley around the edges of the platter and as a border. And your guests will not just eat the hors d’oeuvres but feel just a little more pampered by the whimsy of the display. And they will know that the cook took some time with the preparation of tonight’s meal. The stage has been set, that this meal is going to be a very pleasing experience. It’s about how you want your guests’ first impressions to make them feel. 

 

     What do you do if someone takes you to a really nice five star restaurant, (and they are treating lol) I mean the kind of place where the Maitre D’ will split your lobster tail for you or bone your fish, or flambé your dessert.  Well I don’t know about you, but my shoulders drop, I relax into knowing I’m going to be paid attention to as if I was someone special. And aren’t we all someone special…especially your family friends or guests. Give them that feeling when they come to your home, as if they are special, and going to be pampered with excellent food.

     …An aside for a second s’il vous plait. I’m not saying do it up fancy all the time. There will always be the suppers where someone stopped by and you whip something up for y’all to eat. Still even then you can still offer what you have whipped up with a sense of reverence for the chance to share a meal with this person, by opening a bottle of wine and setting some stemware and cloth napkins on the table with the plates.

     Eating a meal should be more than just poking sustenance in your pie hole. Every meal doesn’t require a lovely set table to sit at, but at least do sit and spend a little time with whomever you are eating with. Eating is probably the most social thing we do. What is most often thought of for getting together?… grab a bite to eat! And what do we do when we grab that bite, we spend time catching up with our friends and such, enjoying their company. Why not do the same at home. I raised four children and yes even in this day and age of school activities, lessons, sports, phones, TV, computers and video games, we had a rule, the same that I was raised with.  Excepting rare occasions, coming to the table for supper was a requirement when I was growing up, as it was when I raised my family. And in both cases the TV got turned off. It has to do with serving, with the presentation of food, with respecting the processes that got it to the table, and respecting each other in the sharing that food with you. And now that my children are grown they have the same respect for a meal shared, that I was raised with.

   And so I step down from my soap box. Digression should be my middle name.

    Going back to the visual elements of a fine dining experience, it is important to be the host who considers that. So now we are talking about the occasions when we want to make extra effort to let guests, family and friends know, that the meal they are going to share is exceptional. Im talking about a special holiday dinner or dinner party, birthday, family gathering etc., these are the times when you should take the time to pull out all the stops, and going along with that analogy, your dining experience for all can be as splendid as a resounding organ playing a Bach piece. 

    Be willing to light candles at the table, use a nice table cloth and cloth napkins with fancy folds. Be willing to come up with a centerpiece, or place cards. That was something we used to always do for Christmas. Be willing to do interesting things with the food, fancy garnishes and things like apple swans. Become a real culinarian. And offer the very best of your efforts when you cook and serve a meal for others.

   I hope to share articles and links to many things VISUAL for serving a great dining experience, from place settings to special cuttings of food decoration and garnishing. I’d like to share what I’ve learned or even invented over the years, as well as connect to places where I may have gotten some of the info and skills. There is a host of wonderful videos out there. Hopefully you can be inspired and you will start brainstorming yourself.

  May your food be prepared with love, presented with art, and enjoyed with reverence, reverie, and whimsy.

 Blessings mes amis.

ZEBRA CAKE

     I believe an important part of cooking is to present food that looks as marvelous as it tastes. As well there are times for decorative garnishes that are artfully made from food, but not necessarily eaten, like sculpted watermelon shells for example. There is probably no more involved food art than the decorated cake. But as I said it should look as good as it tastes. There are those TV shows and competitions where the cake is an incidental building material, with no regard to taste and texture. Let’s not forget the culinary part of things as to be pleasing to the palate. Otherwise these fantastic cakes could be just made of Styrofoam, or Leggos. And we all have had a pretty bakery cake that tastes bland, and the icing is dull mouths full of sugared shortening.

     Having said all that, and in keeping with a discussion of food art and the visual component of cookery, a friend (thanx R.) sent me this video some time ago for this whimsical Zebra cake.  It happens my daughters favorite colors are bright pink and lime green, as well she loves zebra patterns. So when I saw this cake I knew I had to try it for her birthday. This meant waiting some months but it was worth it. Here is the video first. Then below is my attempt and success or no and tips I found from doing this. Her Birthday celebration was Saturday last. 

    So here is my version. As you can see I added lime green to the décor, and made gum paste hibiscus flowers to add to a tropical feel.

    I did want to make it taste good as I said so I instead of just white cake batter, I made a white cake and flavored it with a tsp of ginger and one of almond extract. As well I made a chocolate cake batter and colored it black for the darker stripes. For frosting I made cream cheese icing and mixed it with the same amount of white decorator icing. To give it enough body but a nice taste. Taste-wise it was all delicious.

     

I will say however be sure your batter is thin enough to pour well. My batters were rather thick, and while it made for a rich moist and yummy cake, I had a hard time getting the successive scoops of batter to displace the scoop underneath. I had to tap my pan bottom on the counter many times to get it to settle in, and as you can see,  the stripes did not come out as well, which was a bit disappointing as that, to me, was one of the most delightful parts of the whole thing. Alas, so there is the first tip from my learning experience, thinner batter.

As well I made the gum paste hibiscus and should have left them in the fridge after drying until the last minute, as they “wilted” a bit in the summer heat of July before we finally had the singing of happy birthday.  And so I know a few tips to do a better job next time. But the cake was very attractive I think, I even found zebra striped candles in black pink, and lime green, and it did taste very yummy. And best of all my Daughter loved it. Wish I had gotten a photo of the candles on the cake but with lighting all of them and singing, I forgot to get my camera back out until we were already slicing it.

     Until next time. Blessings mes amis

FULL BUCK MOON, THE FULLNESS OF SUMMER

     The last two nights, the full moon has been unusually bright and “luminous”. The Native American name for this full moon is the full buck moon as the bucks begin to grow their antlers about this time. Deer and its ability to grow antlers have long been a symbol of regeneration for many cultures. As well this is a time when the promises of life regenerated are fulfilled. This is a time of the year when life is abundantly apparent in the Northern hemisphere. A time when all sorts of food was, and is available from fresh fruits, and vegetables, to new meat, and fish, to grains, and wild herbs, and copious amounts of fresh honey.

  A month ago was summer solstice, also known as Midsummer, and in less than a month is Lammastide, which celebrates grain harvest, and is the first of three harvest festivals. If we look at a wheel of the year. The south point is summer solstice. To the peoples of antiquity, it was the time when all their work tending flocks and herds, and tilling and farming fields and gardens, has paid with the bounty of Mother Earth herself. While Yule, the winter solstice, northern most point of the wheel, signifies death and rebirth, summer solstice, called Midsummer because to ancients it was the middle of the season, signifies LIFE. The earth has gone from a maiden who has reached her time of fertility, on Candlemas, to conceiving at spring equinox, called Ostara, to a woman full with child on Mayday, called Beltane, pronounced (BEL-tin-uh),  to summers fullness as Mother, and the earth gives birth to all life.

     The three quarter and cross-quarter days between winter to summer were fertility festivals in hopes of a bounteous year. The three quarter and cross-quarter days between summer to winter solstice are harvest celebrations, in thanksgiving for the bounty the year has provided.

      Summer solstice is sometimes called Litha, a Germanic word for “time of calm seas”, which the Saxons then used for the name of both June and July inclusively. But mostly it was referred to as Midsummer. The ancient peoples as I have said once before did not measure seasons by a specific day but by the signs of change which might be different from year to year… its an early summer.. or we are having a late spring this year… however summer solstice was the “sun”  measure. one of the four points of the year to mark the years passing. It is the day when the sun rises and sets on the horizon at the northern most points, before it goes in the other direction. This means because of the clockwise curve of the suns path in this hemisphere that the sun has a centered zenith on this day at midday closest to the celestial equator, and its path is the longest traveled… making it the longest day. Sol-stice means roughly sun-stop. And this was certainly the day to peoples of antiquity when all things in nature were and are at their greatest bounty… the middle point of the year, significant to their year and spirituality, and the Middle of summer’s ample blessings. To the ancient peoples, it was not the beginning of the season, but its fullness and the culmination of the years work come to fruition.

                                    

     And it was one of the biggest outdoor festivals of the year with much merry making, and eating, and drinking. Naturally a place to take time out from chores of raising food, and before the chores of harvest times come, to just enjoy life. Midsummer was a time for  a well-deserved, mid-year rest.

         Mayday, which came earlier in the year, is the day of the maypole dance, and is certainly a fertility festival. It was most often celebrated outdoors being that it was now warm enough to get outside. This was the day or night, as celebrating started in the morning and lasted by the fire till late night hours, it was customary to get betrothed, or basically announce an engagement. I’m not referring so much to arranged marriages, but the romantic love of the pagans the bards sang of. Spring is a frisky time when love naturally seems to blossom, so some folks would be paired by this time and thinking of walking through life together. So it became customary to make the announcement of the intent to marry, at this time of the year, while folks are gathered together.

     So the next big festival being the great outdoor Midsummer, in some cultures, celebrated at night under the full bright moon nearest summer solstice, would naturally be a time of weddings, or as most cultures did...handfasting. This was and still is the ceremony where the couple hold hands and have them bound together with a chord as a symbol of the marriage commitment. It is the origin of term tying the knot. To this day we still have June as the wedding month in many cultures. It also was the time when mead, made from the year’s first honey was ready, and was one of the first alcoholic drinks ready in the year. Mead, also called honey-mead is a fermented honey drink, similar to beer, often with grains included in the process of making it.  So we have alcohol, merry making around a fire, feasting, and night time outdoor weddings. We have folks being married, under a full moon in summer, and drinking honey mead. The next tradition was to set off to a pasture or meadow and consummate your marriage that evening, outdoors under the stars and moon… the honey-mead moon… which gives us the honeymoon we practice today. 

     Midsummer was a time of magick, and love, and blessings. The abundance and merry making gave pause in the year’s middle. Farming and gardening tasks were reduced to the least work, and herds and flocks were in the pasture. For a time there was so much food, just about anything you could want. It made sense in a hard life to rest here, the middle of the year… the “food” time.

Summer grace all

 for want is not

 upon the year is full.

And bellies be filled with the blessings.

 For bodies have work a half year more,

to reap for the good winters fetching.

     And for us, still today in the grocers and markets,  summer is the time for fresh fruits and vegetables. Berries and cherries and melons. Fresh cool desserts like strawberry shortcake, and wonderful lemon meringue pie. It’s a time for ice cream socials, and cooking outdoors so as not to heat up the house.  It’s a time for wonderful cuts of fresh meat grilled to perfection, for picnics, with fresh garden salads and cold potato salad, or cole slaw. And summer is, here in the southern US anyway, the time for cold beer and cold watermelon, to combat the hot nights. We are pretty much still doing the same things ancient peoples did. Enjoying being outdoors, drinking and eating the same foods, in the same ways. I doubt too many people get looped on honey-mead, and consummate their marriage in an open field, too bad for that really… but they do have weddings and go on a honeymoon. We still take time out from our work to rest mid-year before the rest of the year’s work ahead. We call it vacationing.

     And so the Father Sun has stopped, and changed direction, the Mother Earth has given birth.  The hot days will become warm days with cooler nights. Vacations will be remembered, and seasons will change, as our moods… our body clocks, with them. Revel in the lazy days of summer and her earth gifts, delicious fresh food, and time, and outdoors, while you can. For the wheel of the year never fails to keep turning. 

                                                 Blessings mez amis.